ESA announces big upgrade to its Mars orbiter which found water on red planet's south pole

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that it is upgrading the software of its Mars orbiter, the one which detected liquid water hidden beneath the surface of the red planet’s south pole. Launched 19 years ago, on June 2, 2003, the orbiter named Mars Express has circled Mars for almost two decades and expanded the human understanding of its origin and evolution. Specifically, the instrument undergoing an update is the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) which works by sending low-frequency radio waves down toward the planet using its 40-metre long antenna.

How would the software update help?

ESA says that the new upgradation will enable the orbiter to see not only beneath the surface of Mars but also its Moon, Phobos in more detail than ever before. But to totally understand the advantages of the new software, let us first understand how the orbiter works.

Out of all the low-frequency radio waves sent by Mars Express, some get reflected by the surface, but some travel through the crust and are reflected at boundaries between layers of different materials such as ice, soil, rock and water. Data of these signals are then sent to scientists on Earth, who examine the reflected signals. Through the examination, scientists can map the structure a few kilometers below the Martian surface and study the thickness and composition of the polar ice caps and the properties of volcanic and sedimentary rock layers.

"We faced a number of challenges to improve the performance of MARSIS", Carlo Nenna, MARSIS on-board software engineer said in a statement. "Not least because the MARSIS software was originally designed over 20 years ago, using a development environment based on Microsoft Windows 98". ESA says that the new software will improve signal reception and onboard data processing which will, in turn, increase the amount and quality of scientific data sent to Earth.

"The new software will help us more quickly and extensively study these regions in high resolution and confirm whether they are home to new sources of water on Mars", ESA Mars Express scientist Colin Wilson said. "It really is like having a brand new instrument on board Mars Express almost 20 years after launch," Wilson added.